Summit Daily Letters: It’s a bus, not a buffet

I am disappointed at the attitude Summit Stage drivers and passengers take towards eating and drinking on its buses.

On Sunday, I rode the bus and sat next to a man who used the bus as his personal cafeteria. It was hardly my first experience with this, but he was spilling his food. Confronting such an insouciant passenger directly probably would have been pointless, so when I departed, I asked the driver to tell him to stop.

The driver told me curtly to "have a nice day" — for the record, his comment precluded that — and he made no attempt to fix things. So much for "if you see something, say something."

Every public transit system I know has rules against eating and drinking for good reason and "no food or drink" pictograms are posted on all buses here. It should be an obvious courtesy on a shared vehicle that makes frequent stops and turns. All of us who live here pay sales taxes that keep Summit Stage nominally free and deal with traffic that the Stage helps alleviate. So we should all want a bus system that is pleasant to ride and whose rules are observed and enforced. But for some time it has been ignored and I have had to suffer the effects, from vague food odors to getting spilled on by unapologetic passengers. Enforcement wouldn't cause significant delays and should save on cleaning costs.

And to the people who can't wait a few minutes to eat or drink, please think about the effects that crunching and slurping noises, crumb-filled seats, sticky floors and smelly buses have on your fellow passengers. I am interested in hearing arguments in favor, especially from the Stage itself who condones it.